And here let me retrace my steps to illustrate a point in Industrial Economy which I have already incidentally touched, but have not illustrated as its importance deserves, and as the prevailing misconceptions render necessary. I refer to The Proportion of Meant to Ends, which the artisan must always bear in mind, but which the farmer seems too often to forget No artificer presumes that the labor and material required for a fine table will suffice for a piano forte, nor that a steam engine can be constructed as cheaply as a churn. But the farmer, seeing trees and plants grow around him with weed-like facility and tenacity, often indolently imagines that any tree will grow so, and plants his rare and delicate fruit trees, if he plant such at all, as if they were Oaks and Locusts. But Nature is inexorable in her requirement that the labor and care essential to the production of a choice fruit or plant shall be proportionate to the value of the product You may grow Tine on yellow sand, or Hickory on blue clay; but if you want choice pears or peaches you must devote much labor and expense in preparing and enriching the ground wherein your trees are to be set Too many farmers, not heeding this Jaw, or supposing that Nature may somehow be circumvented, obtain worthless fruit, or none at all, and so abandon the culture in disgust and despair.

There is not one Grape vine or fruit tree, except of the coarsest and commonest kinds, where there should be twenty, taking one State with another: and one consequence of this is an enormous and perilous consumption of flesh as food, to an extent unknown in other countries. We are nationally surfeited with pork and tainted with scrofula, not because we are so fond of pork, but because for an important portion of each year, the majority of our population can get little beside. 'The foolishness of preaching' will never suffice to correct this aberration; for men who work must eat, though their food bo not the best; but give us an abundance of the choicest fruits and vegetables, with farmers who know how to grow them, and truly educated housewives, who delight in preparing and serving them, and we shall enjoy health, elasticity, and longevity to an extent now unknown. A flesh diet is the dearest, the least palatable, and the least wholesome, and all that is needed to wean men from it is the presentation of a better.

To secure this, we need only farmers who will feel a just pride in having the finest orchards and gardens; who will surround, not merely their own dwellings, but those of their tenants and helpers also, with choice trees; and who will plant and keep planting until good fruit shall be so abundant that it can be no longer an object to steal it".